I Have a Girlfriend in Begnion
by R Amythest
Summary: Crimean townspeople like gossiping about Ike. Ike brandishes his asexuality. But not really. Gratuitous vaguely allegorical crack.


**Author's Notes:** Two things. First, this is not meant to be taken seriously. Second, FF.n killed my tildes (AND THUSLY MY SOUL!2!!!1!) and hence the singsong tone in one or two places was ruined. Insert sadface here.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Fire Emblem. Heck, I don't even own a single copy of Radiant Dawn yet, much to my distress. I also do not own fandom's funny tendencies, or very vague inspiration from Avenue Q. Furthermore, I am not explicitly bashing anything with this fic, and am only vaguely poking fun at the fandom. In a very stupid way, I assure you.

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**I Have a Girlfriend in Begnion**

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Ike, the hero of a war and then some, was naturally the subject of great speculation. It had been noted by various Crimean barmaids that he had refused Elincia's hand in marriage, that he never had much interest in maidens, and that shopkeeper of theirs had pursued him for goodness-knows-how-long. But then, they figured, he might have an affair with the red-headed woman – the one who's skilled with the axe, you know? Oh, of course he likes rough women! – or the girl with a sword and ample breasts – very healthy children she'd give. I hear she's youthful, too – or, some gossiped in whispers, perhaps his sister? 

To silence this, Ike announced one day, "I have a girlfriend. In... Begnion."

But he had said that with hopes that it would be a pushover war, but as any man with a real girlfriend could tell him, the talk of women was not to be underestimated.

As cries of "It's Sanaki, isn't it? Oh, how cute!" met him, Ike stormed off to drop his hands with a loud _thump_ on Soren's desk.

"Battle plans," he demanded, twitching. "We need battle plans."

"Ike?" Soren questioned, putting a finger on his page and closing a very pretentious-looking book. "What for?"

"_Women_." And with this, Ike launched into a long and convoluted tale concerning Boyd, bars, and Rolf's innocent ears. Soren nodded, although being reclusive, Ike doubted he understood the magnitude of this situation.

His doubt was confirmed when Soren advised him to "claim asexuality."

"That won't work," Ike said, but Soren raised an eyebrow full of tactical knowledge, and Ike left feeling doomed.

He met with Shinon one day, when the archer was obsessively polishing his arrowheads – a sure sign that he was going through withdrawal and would spend half his gold (or all of it) in some seedy bar that night – and told him to spread the story that he wasn't interested in romance.

"Or lust?" Shinon supplied with a crafty smile.

"Not anything with any beorc or laguz," Ike clarified. Shinon grinned wider and he wondered if had missed something. It became clear next morning that he had, as Boyd socked him 'a good one' and demanded to know what had happened between him and the angel-statues on the town fountain. Ike, confused, socked him back, and Mist ended up pulling them apart, and, rolling her eyes, healed them.

"Rolf's never going to be the same," Boyd exclaimed, pointing a finger at Ike and ignoring the fact that Rolf hadn't heard a word of gossip since he was three. "Can't you just get a damn woman?"

"No," Mist supplied, despite Ike's protests. "Because he's in loooove with Sooooren."

There followed a lengthy silence. Then, finally, Ike asked, "Mist, where do you get these ideas?" and Boyd burst out laughing.

"You have terrible taste in men," he commented through gasps and laughter. "No, _boys_. Boys."

"This is ridiculous," Ike grated.

Ike threw open Soren's doors and slammed his hands again on Soren's desk.

"Ike, if you would recall," Soren sighed from the window, "these furnishings are at least twenty years old, and I would appreciate it if you would stop abusing them."

"She thinks we're together!" Ike said in an exasperated voice.

Soren blinked blankly, apparently rather slow in the guessing-women's-thoughts department.

"Mist." Ike sputtered. "You and me. _Together_."

Uncomfortably flushing and looking out the window, Soren muttered, "I wonder where she got that idea."

Too flustered to pay attention to whether or not Soren's face was a normal shade of red, Ike asked desperately, "Soren, where do I go to and what do I seize to fix this?"

If he had been any less traumatized and/or repressed, Soren's answer would've been "Bed, my underpants," but as he was indeed bitter and dripping with angst, he suggested, "You could make this girlfriend in Begnion appear more realistic and less like Sanaki." Ike thought that was a brilliant plan and immediately prepared to shop for his 'girlfriend in Begnion'.

That is, he would've, if the prospect of shopping didn't harrow him so greatly. Dragging a woman along, he decided, would make it seem like he was dating or entertaining her. So as he left for the plaza, he took Oscar with him, muttering something along the lines of, "Help me in this mission. I need your sensibility."

Ike returned feeling relieved, but within a week, Boyd shot possessive looks at Ike. It was at this point that Ike gave up on asking his fellow men and asked Mist. "Look, why do women enjoy bickering over whether I ... _enjoy_," Ike gagged on the word, "Titania, Mia, Sanaki, statues, Soren, or Oscar?"

"They also talk about Elincia, Lethe, Boyd, and themselves," Mist provided helpfully.

"Mist, explain, _why_?" Ike pressed. "Why won't they believe that I have a girlfriend in Begnion?"

"Sanaki is a popular guess," Mist helped cheerfully. At Ike's scowl, she smiled sweetly and said, "I guess we just like thinking about romantic things. If you just got married, the rumors would stop..." She paused and reconsidered that statement. "Well, no, they wouldn't. But it wouldn't be this bad if you were old, happily married, and boring!"

"I wish I were," he grumbled.

"I mean," she persisted, "no one is really interested in who Tauroneo likes, right?"

"Mist," Ike said, staring, "_Mist._ I don't want to think about that."

"Exactly."

"So... I'll have to get old."

"And then no one will be interested in your love life," Mist finished.

Ike, who didn't fancy waiting through tens of years of gossip, went to Aimee, the very goddess of gossip, to ask for other methods of quelling said gossip. Finding Aimee was relatively simple: he asked the nearest bartender which direction he had heard happy shrieking from at insane hours of the morning. Solemnly, he pointed in a direction and offered him a free mug of ale. Deciding that he would need his wits about him, Ike declined, and the bartender offered him a tombstone instead. By now feeling that the bartender was creepier than Aimee, Ike fled in the earlier recommended direction.

Lifting a tent flap, he was assailed by the scent of perfume. More importantly, he was assailed by Aimee. "Ikey-poo!" she squealed happily, making a motion as if about to hug him. Ike nervously stepped to the side, now extremely conscious about the ways of women.

"Aimee, I need your help. Make these rumors stop," he said bluntly. In hindsight, he told himself that should've said, "I require your assistance" or something formal like that, to make it clear that he was there on a professional and not a personal basis. He ended up lying on some manner of bed, shirtless, while Aimee dripped a dubious warm hazy white liquid on his chest.

"How does this help?" he asked, feeling that this method would only worsen the situation. The liquid made a particularly large squelch, and he winced.

"Milk of wyvern is very useful for dirtying your good name!" she hummed. "The rumors about you will change instantly!" She grinned, and it was clear that she was imagining, "_And then you will be mine_!" ... Somehow. She was probably thinking twelve steps ahead.

Ike instantly sat up, the liquid dripping on his pants. "Th-that's not what I meant!" He looked down and cursed, attempting to brush it off his pants, but the color stuck. "Aimee, stop this immediately and send for my sister."

But Aimee told him innocently that she had no way to send for anyone, and Ike, grasping at the last strands of creativity in his mind, was forced to dye all his clothes white in wyvern milk, hoping that it would look somewhat less questionable. He then ran through the village at top speed.

"Ike, weren't your pants blue this morning?" Mist commented as Ike ran in, blushing, and promptly closed the door.

"Aimee," he explained, and went to his room to change. Pulling a clean set of clothes from his closet, he thought to himself with a hint of indignity that Aimee hadn't even given him a solution.

There was a knock at his door, and pulling up a clean pair of pants, he said, "Come in?"

Soren stood there, looking unexpectedly frazzled. "Ike," he sobbed.

"Uh – come in." Ike was unsure of how to deal with this. Not because Soren had never sobbed to him, but usually it took two hours of Shinon rambling and a bad atmosphere to get to this part. The end result was the same, though: an armful of Soren asleep on his bed. All the more incriminating when Mist came in asking for his laundry.

"This," she whispered as to avoid waking up Soren, "is where I get my ideas from."

"Go do the laundry," Ike whispered back in what he hoped was a brotherly way.

The next morning – very _early_ next morning, Ike led a half-asleep Soren back to his room. Once inside, Ike half-confessed, "Sometimes I think women change me." Soren gave him a questioning look. "I mean, it's like either everything's changing or I am. Or both."

"Don't you think it's a bit early for midlife crisis?" Soren asked, his sanity clearly having returned overnight.

Ike gave him a frustrated look. "All I know is that no one used to care who I liked."

After a measured, analytical pause, Soren glanced at him and said sagely, "And who _do_ you 'like'?"

"_No one_!" Soren seemed slightly disappointed. "Honestly, can't a man live on_ without_ being lovestruck?"

"Absolutely not. It's a vital component of your character."

"... What?"

"I was joking, Ike. That was a joke." And yet, Ike felt, that sarcastic reply explained everything. But then, Soren hardly ever made jokes, and he felt obligated to enjoy it. "You're tired. Go back to sleep," Soren commanded, rising and opening that pretentious-looking book. Ike gave one look at the small text in the book and decided that that would be a good idea.

He then practiced swordplay that morning, attempting to ignore the new concerns about his reputation that were popping up for what seemed like no valid reason. Halfway through, he was interrupted.

"Aimee wants to see you," Mist told him, and Ike almost dropped a sword on his foot.

He reasoned to himself that Aimee was not going to go away no matter how long he waited, and, bracing himself, put away the sword and went in to get it over with.

"Ikey-poo," she cooed, holding a crystal ball in front of her.

"What do you want?" he said flatly.

"Oh, you see," she said, putting on that fake damsel voice of hers again, "last night I went to bed when I had a most vivid dream!" Ike nodded and tried to listen. "When I woke, I realized that I had a stunning vision about you! In fact, you had come to see me about this very thing!"

"What is it?" Ike said, trying to sound interested.

"In three years," she said with a coy smile, "there will be another war."

"Shouldn't you inform Elincia about this?"

"But you see! The vision was so very specific!" she insisted. "In three years there will be another war, and at its opus, you will speak with... Soren." She made a face.

"Uh huh." Ike was still oblivious to what she was talking about.

"You will speak to him about very _close_ and _intimate _matters!" Aimee seemed somewhat grumpy about this part, though Mist was interested enough to not-too-discreetly linger.

"But?"

"But afterwards!" she cried, waving her arms dramatically and dropping the crystal ball, where it managed to bounce on the floor with the sound of a child's ball, rather than shattering. "After the war, you surprise all the peasants by taking me by the hand and leading me to a horse!"

"Shouldn't that have shattered?" Ike asked, giving the ball a nudge with his foot. It didn't feel like it was made out of crystal.

"Oh, it's the spirits, you know, they protect it." She gave a smile and picked it back up, continuing to give him the prophecy. "We are the talk of all the masses! No more of that Elincia or Soren!"

There was a dramatic silence, which, given time, quickly turned into a not-so-dramatic silence. Ike scratched his neck and was thankful that this time, it did not involve wyvern milk.

"I'm going back to my swordplay now."

"But wait, Ikey-poo!" Aimee made an unladylike lunge for Ike's arm, but missed, clinging onto his waist instead. "We're destined for each other! Canon, as the townspeople say!"

"I really don't care," he said firmly before prying her off and picking up his sword and sheath, the only sword and sheath he figured he'd ever concern himself with.

At the end of the day, Ike briefly contemplated becoming a hermit before Mist wisely purchased a set of monk-like robes in the style of masquerading laguz. The next time he went to the plaza, which seemed like ages but was in reality only about two months, he listened to the gossip, now concerning how the famous general had long disappeared from the public eye and must've died in a complicated conspiracy plot, with great amusement.

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**Endnotes:** I have a feeling that I am now subject to the wrath of both camps. And that I just dissed my OTP somehow. See Ammie. See Ammie do stupid things in the name of art. See Ammie flee. 


End file.
